


the way i used to be.

by scoundrelhan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Military Backstory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-10-19 23:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10650345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoundrelhan/pseuds/scoundrelhan
Summary: Finn has just moved into a small but convenient apartment in a small but quaint coastal town in northern Oregon. Two years after returning from a long, hard tour overseas, Finn just wants to build a peaceful life for himself. Veteran-led group therapy seems to be the best place to start.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the cities described in this fic do not exist/do not exist in Oregon, and were made up solely for plot purposes. Although this is a modern AU, the timeline does not comply directly with real events, so although this is influencd by, it is not based off of the Iraq war. I took many liberties with this, but I am trying my best to write an honest portrayal of PTSD and the overall effects that war can have on people and their lives.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own, nor do I claim to own, the characters of Star Wars, or Star Wars, in general.

Finn hadn't known the home that greeted him.

War did that - changed things. His life was split down the middle now: before the war, and after. Before the war, there had been many sections of time, so many splits, so many lines it was like looking at the side of a deck of cards. Pick a card, any card. That one was the summer before freshman year, when he tried out for the football team and his grandmother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. That one was high school graduation, when he was lost and scared and so poor his sisters were working three jobs respectively because mom was gone now, too; when he realized even with a scholarship, college wasn’t even a pipedream; when he signed up for basic training before he’d even changed out of his robe. Now, there was a line that erased all the other lines, and he'd been standing on a dry rotted doorstep that used to have a mat that said  _ WELCOME HOME _ . That steamy, Florida day, he had read a sign that said  _ FORECLOSED _ .

Finn had walked back down the steps to the sidewalk where the taxi had spit him out into the familiar heat of the Florida sun.

He hadn't been sad, or angry, or anything at all. Finn hadn't felt a thing, which was normal, but it wasn’t supposed to be like that, like it was Over There. Coming home was the only plan he’d ever had. Not because he wanted to come back, but because there was really nothing else out there for him. He’d seen the world, and didn’t want anything it had to offer. Coming home was supposed to be the end of it all. He was supposed to walk through the door, drop his duffel, and his sisters were going to come running, smiling tired smiles but smiling, nonetheless. Mom was back, sometimes, in those daydreams. She’d be in the background, hand over her mouth, and her hair done up like she used to when they were little. War did that, too, made you dream things you never dared before you were at death’s door, before you could hear its booming voice dropping from the sky.

He hadn't had a phone to contact anyone (he didn’t have anyone to contact) or to call another cab (he didn’t know where to go), so he'd started walking.

The thing was it was hard to stop once he got going.

Two years had passed since he'd stepped off that plane in Tampa, feeling like a child left abandoned to fend for himself. He walked, and drove, and hitchhiked his way around the country, and finally, his feet stopped on the banks of the Pacific in a little northern Oregon port town. It felt right. Finn had had his fill of wandering. The people here were kind, didn’t ask many questions once they learned he wasn’t much for talking. He used most of his savings for the security deposit on a tiny apartment overlooking the beach. That felt right, too. Money was something he’d learned to covet. He’d rubbed pennies his whole life, hoping beyond hope that one day more would sprout, but that didn’t matter. Jobs were easy to find if you knew where to look, and he did. Two years had passed, and he’d been a carpenter, a plumber, a trucker, a mechanic. Anything, and everything. Name a job that didn’t require much of a degree, and Finn had probably done it. His resume would have been a mile long, if he’d had one. People seemed to like Finn. Said he had an honest face. Being a veteran helped, too, but he didn’t like to think about that most days.

Finn was sitting on the deck that wasn’t much of a deck. Just a few two-by-fours with enough of a railing to stop someone from tumbling down to their rocky death. The beer in his hand was the same temperature as the air: crisp, invigorating. The ocean made the air cold, knocked it down a few degrees compared to the blacktop streets of the town. He liked that. He liked the cold. It chased away the hot memories of his childhood, and the scorching memories of Over There. Hot as hell, except hotter. At night, when the ocean couldn’t chase the heat away, those thoughts made him wake up sweating so bad, he would have sworn, hand to God, that his dreams had spirited him away back to the desert sands.

The phone rang from inside. It was his landlady. She was the only one who ever called because she was the only person who knew him well enough to call. Or, more accurately, she was the only one who knew his number. Mrs. Browning was kind. This was his second week in Providence, and she’d made an effort to check on him once a day, make sure he was settling alright and that the old radiator wasn’t giving him too much grief. She’d sent a care basket that was still sitting all wrapped up and tied with a bow on the kitchen counter. If he was being honest, Finn didn’t know what to do with it. If he was being completely honest, Finn didn’t know what to do with himself. Permanence, commitment, domesticity - these were words that had been carved out of him, their meanings turned to bloody dust after four years of being under the knife of their exact opposites. He was trying, which they said was what counted. For what, he didn’t know yet, but he was trying, anyway. He felt like a blind man, navigating the world without a clue what was in front of him, what was out there lurking in the darkness, waiting to pounce. There were no physical threats out there that scared him. He could not imagine anything worse than Over There. Finn had faced the devil himself, but living with that experience was the real evil.

He knew talking would help, but there was no one to talk to, no one who would listen. There had been others along the way, men and women with the same haunted look in their eye who would buy him a drink, tell their story, offer him a place to sleep, point him in another direction. Tell him that he wasn’t alone. He knew that, too. Knew that he wasn’t the only one who’d given up everything, but he felt like it, especially now that he was here in a place that felt further from home than Over There had. At least, when he’d been away, there had been letters, and his comrades to keep him company. Mrs. Browning was his only tether to reality these days. The people he passed on the streets were like ghosts, beings that existed on another plane of existence than he did. So close he could touch, but he feared if he reached out, his hand would pass right through them, and he’d find himself staring up at bullet holes instead of water stains.

Finn took a long swig, and forced himself out of the lawn chair. The phone had stopped ringing, but a little red light blinked up at him, signalling a voicemail. He played it, listened to Mrs. Browning ramble about how her husband was working late again, and how she’d made such a nice dinner and that he was welcome to join her, if he wanted. She wasn’t forcing him. Might be nice to get out of that little place.  _ I’ll come over tomorrow, if I don’t see you tonight. _ He dropped his empty bottle in the trash, and opened the fridge for another. Bright, white shelves stared back at him. They held nothing, except an empty, cardboard beer case and the filter pitcher he’d bought after tasting the tap water.

There was a locally run grocery store just down the road. It was a nice walk, long enough to let his mind drift, but short enough that the cold wouldn’t seep into his bones. His wardrobe contained a few shirts, a pair of jeans, and his old uniform, which had taken up permanent residence in the back of his closet. Another bullet on the list of things he needed: a coat. He added it, stored away the list in his thoughts for later, as he fought with the tangled, frayed laces of his boots that liked to remind him just how beat up they were at the wrong times. Keys in hand, Finn headed out the door.

“Evening!” An accented voice called off to his right.

Finn turned, and a woman about his age was smiling at him, hair pulled back into a wet bun, a pair of swim goggle dangling around her neck.

“You must be the new guy.”

“Yes, I am,” Finn said, and took the hand that she offered to him. He was surprised by the strength in her grip.

“I’m Rey Walker. You got a name?”

“Finn.”

“Just Finn?”

Finn nodded.

“Well, Just Finn, it’s good to meet you. We don’t get many out-of-towners around here,” Rey said, still flashing her dimpled smile, and his lips quirked up in response. “Hey, I was actually about to make some dinner. Want to join me?”

He almost said yes. The word swayed on the edge of his tongue, threatening to tip right off the edge, but he kept his mouth clamped shut, swallowed it back.

“Thank you for the offer, but I’ll have to pass for now, ma’am.”

A strange look passed across her face at the formality, like a cloud crossing in front of the bright sun.

“Anne said you were military.” It was not a question.

“Yes.” He choked on another  _ ma'am _ . It tasted bitter on the way down.

Rey nodded to herself, and the wide smile from before melted into something distant. She seemed to be debating with herself, flip flops scuffing the stained carpet, and then, she opened her mouth.

“Me too. I mean, I was.”

Before Finn could say anything, she kept going.

“The offer's still open. Anytime you’re hungry, or don’t want to make something yourself, just knock. See you around, Just Finn.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

The hallway was quiet again, save for his breathing and the distant waves. Finn stared at the golden numbers on Rey Walker’s door for a long time.

He ran to the store instead of walked, and grabbed a TV dinner, a few bags of chips. Another case of beer. Eating was mechanical, not enjoyable. He forced down the processed peas, and dried out potatoes, pretended to watch reruns of  _ Seinfeld _ until he couldn’t take the noise anymore. Finn went to bed early because there was nothing better to do. He brushed his teeth, and considered the stubble on his jaw. Another bullet on the list: razor, and shaving cream. Bullets crossed out: One sheet, and one pillow. A mattress was a luxury that was still too much to bear. He settled himself on the couch, and he felt like he was lying on a cloud that would swallow him whole.

Finn did not set an alarm. After years of falling asleep to gunfire, he did not sleep sound enough or long enough to need one. Basic training had beat it into him that he was a tool, and tools were used. Tools were woken up whenever they were needed. It was ingrained in him, so deeply rooted he wasn’t sure it could ever be reversed, like a cancer. Once it spread, it was near impossible to kill. Before the war, he’d taken naps whenever he felt like it, slept in till noon, till the sun was high in the sky. After the war, he stared at the rotating blades of the ceiling fan until his eyes ached, and he closed them just to feel like he was trying. Because that counted. Because he needed to pretend like he was moving on, like the blades hadn’t reminded him of helicopters, and coarse winds. His alarm was his dreams, and the past. They never let him sleep in past five, if he was lucky enough to get to that point.

Tonight was no different.

_ Me too. I mean, I was _ . Rey Walker’s voice echoed inside the chambers of his mind.

It had struck a chord deep inside of him, a sour one, when she’d told him that. People who smiled as kind as Rey shouldn’t have stories like Finn’s to tell. No one should have the stories, but they did. So it goes, and all that. He turned on his side so he could see the rest of the dimly lit room. The need to see everything had lingered, a bad aftertaste. Like the shadows had guns, and knives, and hands that were trained to kill. Maybe they did. Over There they did. He didn’t have his gun anymore. He didn’t want it, but his hand still crept under the pillow, expected to meet cold metal. Bad habits.

Finn closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.

 

\---

 

He did end up sleeping. For a little while, at least, which was a lot more than usual.

The rising sun dragged him out of his mind and back to the living room, set him down beneath the thin Wal-Mart sheet, peeled back his eyelids. It flooded through the glass sliding door that led to the deck and the shore, and Finn squinted to watch its slow journey. In the distance, a lonely fishing boat drifted on the calm waves. Finn got up, and opened the door to let some fresh air in. He stepped out for a moment, took a deep breath. The wind whipped around him, pressed the fabric of his sweatpants flush against his thighs, prickled the skin of his bare arms. When he was a kid, they used to beg for a breeze, anything to stir up the heavy, humid air they’d been drowning in. He had his own slice of the world here. If he looked straight ahead, he could imagine himself floating over the sparkling water, unattached, floating above and away from it all.

Movement to his left jolted him back into his body.

The girl from yesterday - Rey Walker, he hadn’t forgotten - was leaning against her own railing that matched his. A mug was in her hands, thin tendrils of steam rising in front of her face. She wasn’t looking at him, but it was clear that she knew he was there. He figured he should say something. A polite “good morning”, or something along those lines. That’s what people were supposed to do. Be polite. Even after two years, he was a stranger in this society. A cog that didn’t quite fit back into the machine.

“How long were you over there?” He asked, hoped his voice wasn’t smothered by the wind.

Rey stood straighter. Anyone else would have missed it, but Finn saw the change, the reflex. He saw, because he did it, too, when people asked these sorts of questions. She set her mug down on the railing, and pulled her arms tight across her chest, hands disappearing into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

“Just one tour.”

Finn felt his chest tighten. There was no  _ just  _ about things like this. He recalled the goggles, and the wet hair, and asked his next question.

“Navy?”

“How’d you guess?” She laughed.

Finn looked down, and away. There were more boats on the horizon now. The world was waking up.

“Hey,” Rey said. Finn looked back to her, and she was facing him now. If he reached across the gap, he could have touched her. “I have a friend at the VA hospital in the next city over. He runs a sort-of group therapy session every other day. Vets only. I go when I’m not teaching at the rec. The next one’s this afternoon. You don’t have to come, but… It helps, you know? If that’s not your thing, I get it, and it’s not my place to imply I understand a thing about you, but I know what it’s like.”

Finn searched Rey’s face. She looked tired, but there was a strength in her, in the set of her small shoulders. She was someone who’d come back, and made it work. Dug herself out of the pit, inch by terrible inch. It was time that he did the same. He saw the light at the top, but he couldn’t find the solution, find the strength in himself to keep going. He’d met people like that, who’d seen the light but stopped. Let themselves fall back to the bottom. It wasn’t that he was unwilling, but it had been hard taking that first step towards something better. He’d done that, took the first step in his hometown and wandered, but there were always more steps to take. Rey was offering another path.

“Yeah,” his mouth said. The word fell off the edge. His brain was too far behind to hold it back.  “Yeah, sure. I’ll come.”

Rey nodded, and smiled again. She seemed to do that a lot.

“I have a fresh pot of coffee on the stove.”

Finn thought of his empty fridge.

“I’ll help you finish it.”

He found himself staring at the same numbers from last night - 2186, one number off from his - but not near as long. Before he could knock, Rey opened the door, and stood aside to let him through. Her apartment mirrored his in layout, but not in decoration. While his was Spartan and bare, like no one had moved in at all, Rey had made a home. Pictures of a young girl and an older man lined the walls. Little knick knacks, old toys, a calendar. Things that people accumulated over the years. There was still a hint of military neatness about the place that Finn related to. He still folded his clothes like he’d be shipped off in an hour, and made his “bed” like his old CO would materialize from thin air and shout at him about creases and insubordination. One of the pictures caught his eyes. It was a larger frame that held a photograph of the same older man and young woman. He realized that the woman was Rey, but from the looks of her uniform, it was her from many years ago. The older man was wearing a uniform as well, but it was from another era, another war. Rows of medals were pinned to his chest. His hair and beard told Finn that he was retired, but Rey looked fresh, a new recruit.

“That’s me, and my dad. It was the day before I left.”

Finn turned around, and Rey was holding out a mug with a mountain painted on the side. He took it, and she moved to stand beside him. They both looked at the frame, but Finn snuck a glance at her face. She looked withdrawn, lips a thin line, but the expression passed as quickly as it came.

“I miss him.”

“Did he die?” Finn asked, and he realized too late that maybe he should have slipped in a euphemism instead of being so blunt.

Rey shook her head. Finn didn’t press for more.


	2. Chapter 2

Finn regretted not taking Rey up on her dinner invite, but he was glad to be with her now. She was easy to be around. No bullshit. Asked questions, but figured out what topics to avoid. Learned that he wasn’t the sharing type, so she filled the silence with her life story. She told him about how she’d been born in England, but grew up in Arizona, and joined the Navy as fast as she could. In part, to follow in her father’s footsteps, but also largely because she couldn’t stand the sight of sand anymore. Finn had to laugh at that.

“Except the thing was, once I was out there, I couldn’t think of anything but going home,” Rey said, curled up on the chair across from him.

Finn nodded into his third cup of coffee.

“When I got back, I thought I’d just start from where I left off, but leaving was inevitable. All my friends had moved on. There was really nothing left for me there, so I went north. I was in California for a while, but I got tired of it, and ended up here. I like my life.”

Rey didn’t mind his silence, and Finn was thankful for her patience. He liked hearing her talk. She was quiet, too, but in a way that made him feel comfortable. She only said what she wanted to say, chose her words with care. She told him all about her job at the rec, how she didn’t know what to do with all of the skills she had besides pass them on.

“I never wanted kids,” she said. “But I’ve grown attached. They teach you more than you teach them, sometimes.

“The rec keeps me busy, but I fix boats on the side. I wanted to be an engineer before, you know,” she said, waving her hand like that explained it, and it did. Finn wanted to tell her, _I do know. There’s before, and there’s after, no inbetween._ “I’m considering going back to school, but right now, it’s okay. I like teaching kids how to swim. I like waking up to the sound of the ocean from outside my door, instead of all around me. I like knowing the people who pass me on the street. It’s good, and it’s my own. No one tells me what to besides a bunch of five-year-olds who think they know how to do a perfect breaststroke.”

Finn imagined her in the water, hair in a bun, surrounded by a bunch of toddlers and kindergartens, their wide eyes watching her every demonstration. Splashing around, having fun. Where they sent him, there was no water. The skills he had weren’t something he ever wanted to share with the world. 

“Oh, shit,” Rey swore, and it startled another laugh out of Finn. Twice now, he’d done that, and each time, it felt like some kind of revelation. The light got a little closer. An hour in Rey’s presence, drinking her coffee and listening to her voice, Finn felt like he’d known her since they were kids. God, he hadn’t been with another person this long since… He couldn’t remember when. She hopped up from the table, and he craned his neck to watch her dig around in the cupboards.

“What?” Finn asked.

“Breakfast!”

He laughed again, louder and longer. It felt good to laugh, like he was shaking off some phantom weight he’d never realized was suffocating him. Finn joined her in the cramped kitchen, leaned against the sink and watched her do her thing.

“Do you prefer scrambled, or sunny side up?”

Finn blinked.

“Whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

Preferences were another thing that was overwhelming. The first time he’d gone into a Target since being back made him want to cry, and not in a good way. Too many choices for a guy who’d had the ability to choose taken away for too long. He knew he should have some idea of what he liked, but really, he just ate whatever was put in front of him because the fear in him, the one that whispered _this might be the last time_ , hadn’t let go. He didn’t know if it ever would. Rey cracked a few eggs into a bowl and started stirring.

“There’s some bacon in the fridge.”

Finn slipped past her, and opened the fridge door. The trays and shelves were overflowing with vegetables, cheeses, bottled water. He found the bacon behind a head of broccoli. He set it down on the counter, and went back to observing Rey’s routine.

“God, the first breakfast I had when I got stateside was… top five best memories of my life. It was at an IHOP, and I got the biggest order of pancakes they had, and I ate the entire thing. Felt sick for an entire day afterward, but it was worth it,” Rey said, and poured the eggs into the pan.

Finn’s first meal after the war wasn’t really a breakfast at all. He’d gotten a burger and a small fry from the McDonald’s at the airport, and didn’t finish it. All that grease had made him sick.

Rey hummed when she wasn’t talking. Little snippets of pop songs Finn didn’t know the names to, or old ballads, or rock songs he remembered from high school. All of it mashed into one, off key tune as she poked at strips of bacon, and popped bread into the toaster. His heart ached, and he didn’t understand why until she started humming this one song, this one song that he remembered… The deck of cards flickered into existence for one second to show him the card where his mother was still with them, and it was after she’d gotten back from her shift, and she was making a casserole, something small, and humming, and he’d been sitting at the table reading a brochure for community college. A hand on his wrist. The deck of cards disappeared, and the line returned. Rey piled eggs, and bacon, and toast onto plates for Finn to carry to the table, and after he helped her put all the dishes and pans into the dishwasher, they sat down together, and he tried to forget the ache.

He dug in, and wow, that was good. This was really good. He said so, and Rey smiled around a mouthful of eggs, and he thought he might actually be okay here in this small, unfamiliar town with this small, familiar girl as his neighbor, who didn’t know a thing about him but still let him walk through her door, sit at her table and share her food like they were old friends, like this was just a thing they did.

“Wait till you come for dinner,” Rey said, and he liked that it wasn’t an _if_ statement.

That made him feel better, lighter. She wanted him to come over, and well, he wanted to come over, too. Two hours, and he’d made a friend. A real, genuine friend. At least, that was what he thought this was: friendship. Two people hanging out, enjoying themselves. This was how normal people spent their time.

Finn wasn’t used to a dishwasher. He’d washed dishes by hand since the time he could walk, but it was convenient. Rey showed him where to put the soap gel, and what setting to turn the knob, and well, that was really all there was to it.

“Thank you,” Finn said.

Rey just shook her head.

“Any time, Finn. It was nice to have you over. It gets pretty lonely around here.”

 _You don’t have to tell me that_ , Finn thought to himself. He smiled instead, lips tight around the action. It was like ice thawing after a long, long winter. Everything was stiff with cold, but the feeling, the life, was coming back, slowly but surely. One step at a time. That first one was always the hardest.

“I’m leaving for the VA around noon. You can come back whenever you feel like as long as it’s by then.”

“I will,” Finn said as he stood in the doorway, hands full. She’d put all the leftovers into tupperware, and forced them upon him, wouldn’t hear any protests.

“See you then,” Rey said before Finn stepped out into the hallway, and the door shut behind him, this time a lot less rushed.

Finn felt like he was floating, except this time it wasn’t over a vast ocean, wasn’t because he was trying to escape. Rey was funny, and kind, and didn’t treat him like he was something to be coddled, like a shattered mirror glued back together. Sure, it still reflected, but there were pieces missing, chunks ripped out of the person that stared back. He felt good. He felt solid.

Back in his apartment, he put the tupperware in the fridge. It was nice to see something in there for once besides beer and water. They made things feel less temporary. Tupperware meant seeing Rey again, meant more conversations over coffee, over meals. They meant a future. Finn realized it was probably weird to be having life revelations while staring at mismatched plastic containers with the fridge wide open and letting all the cold air out.

He decided on taking a shower. The bathroom tile was the worst shade of pink, and it was too cramped for a guy his size, but he didn’t mind. It was his. He didn’t have to share it with fifty other guys, or wear flip flops because toe fungus was a concern, or worry about where his eyes happened to stray. Finn stripped, and tried not to look at his back but it was hard not to. A scar, bright pink and thick, stretched from his shoulder blade to his tailbone. Most days, it was easy to pretend it wasn’t there, ignore the pain it still caused him. He turned away from the mirror, and cranked the water as hot as it would go. When he stepped in, the spray burned his skin, poured over him like lava. Just how he liked it. He usually took showers at lightning speed, efficient as possible, but today he let himself stand there, and soak it all in. In an hour or so, he’d be with Rey again. Rey, his friend.

Of course, like any human being, he’d considered the idea of settling down, finding someone to share a life with, except the idea was so very foreign, a language he didn’t understand but recognized. He craved companionship, but people were like a minefield. One wrong step, one wrong word, and the whole thing would be blown to bits. Boom. Gone. There was a reason he didn’t talk to anyone besides his landlady (and now, Rey). Finn wasn’t any good with that kind of stuff. He’d had a few flings back in high school, but they didn’t mean anything. He’d just been some dumb kid playing at being an adult, someone who understood words like _commitment_ and _love_. Finn sure as hell didn’t understand them now.

It wasn’t like that with Rey. She was nice, and shared the same struggles, but she was definitely in the friend category. He didn’t want to ruin a good thing anyway by jumping off the deep end too soon, by throwing himself into the water without even knowing how to keep his head above the surface. A step at a time. Take things slow. That was as good a plan as any.

The water here ran cold just as quick as it ran hot, so he scrubbed at his scarred skin as hard as he could. There were bullet burns, and close calls all over him, a map of combat. Finn could pretend all he wanted, wear long sleeves in summer, but his body didn’t lie. His back had healed after a few months of mandated physical therapy - it still tweaked him sometimes - but the memory of it never stopped hurting. None of it stopped hurting. He scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed until his raw skin screamed louder than his thoughts.

_Rey. Think about Rey. Breakfast._

It wasn’t enough.

_He can hear the bombs dropping all around them, and his friends, other soldiers, are screaming orders and screaming, in general. Fire is falling like rain. Slip is shouting at him to keep moving, keep moving. Doors are being kicked in left and right. More screaming. He grabs onto Slip’s arm to steady himself, and then he is falling, like he has tied a stone and thrown himself into the ocean. Slip is the stone. Slip is bleeding all over the ground and Finn. He is gasping, but his throat isn’t. His throat is torn to shreds. He flails, and his hand catches Finn’s cheek, fingers scratching at his skin, and Finn doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do. Slip stops choking. He doesn’t know what to do. Someone is calling his name, grabbing at his sleeve, pulling him away. He doesn’t know what to -_

The water had turned cold. Finn felt himself shaking.

This was normal. He knew how to handle himself. This was normal. This was normal. Keep breathing. This was normal.

Slowly, so slowly, Finn pushed away from the wall. His knees threatened to give out, but he steadied himself, crushed the shower curtain in his right hand and pressed the other to the wet tile. He breathed, in and out, around the tightness in his chest. He turned the water off. He picked the forgotten bar of soap off the floor. He stepped out of the shower.

The mirror had fogged over from the heat, and Finn didn’t move to wipe it away. He was okay existing as an indistinct blob of color. If he saw his face, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but it wouldn’t be good. After he’d toweled himself off, he walked through the living room to the room that was supposed to be his bedroom. Nothing was in it except an old mattress frame, a dresser, and his duffel. He unzipped the bag, and pulled out his jeans. They were worn thin from use, the denim soft in his hands.

Finn stayed there, squatting on the floor, rubbing his jeans between his fingers. His eyes burned, and when he blinked, something hot streaked down his cheek, caught on the line of his jaw. When he wiped it away, his fingers came back shiny with moisture. Tears. He was crying. That was normal. Finn stood up, tugged his only other pair of boxers on, and then his jeans before going back to the living room to lay down on his couch/bed.

None of this was normal, but it was the normal he had accepted. This was the normal after the war. He either kept going, or let himself be trampled by the momentum of life. He stared up at the ceiling, and glanced at the clock the last tenant had left hanging on the far wall every few minutes. Finn wanted to go over to Rey’s, to feel steady in her presence, to have someone there to ground him in the present but he was so tired. Tired in his mind and soul. Deep in his bones. He wasn’t going to back out of their plans. He clearly needed to talk, or at least, to try. Finn was stubborn when it came to some things, but he knew when he was in over his head.

The rest of the hour passed by in a daze. He didn’t sleep, but he wasn’t quite awake either. Suspended between the world of the living, and the abyss of his subconscious. There were no dreams, or another attack - a small mercy. He came back to himself five minutes to noon, and let himself breathe for one more before pulling on his wrinkled shirt, grabbing his keys and his wallet, and heading over to Rey’s.


	3. Chapter 3

Rey owned a beat-up pickup truck that looked like it had gone through at least five paint jobs in its lifetime. Finn could see a layer of yellow peeking out from beneath the current slate grey. Rust spots dotted its old frame.

“She’s not pretty, but she got me all around the country,” Rey said after they’d climbed in.  
  
The drive between Providence and New Haven was peaceful, a reprieve from the episode in his apartment. The scenery was gorgeous out here, nothing like the swampy, flat wasteland down south. He stared at the evergreens until they blurred into one never-ending wall of green. A distant mountain stretched up into the sky, its peaks cut off by low clouds. He wanted to ask Rey what it was called, but the quiet was comforting. Finn didn’t want to ruin it, didn’t think his mouth would work even if he wanted it to. He was still drained from what happened in the shower. The leather seats were a little forgiving, but the phantom pain in his spine had come back full force, sharp points along his vertebrae that he couldn't be sure were real or imagined.  
  
Rey turned the radio on after a few minutes.   
  
It didn’t take long for the forest to turn back into civilization. The change was never subtle. One second, you were looking at untouched wilds, and the next, you were surrounded by buildings, houses, bustling streets. Finn never failed to be unsettled by it.  
  
New Haven wasn’t all that different from Providence besides being bigger and farther from the ocean. The architecture had the same charming feel to it, and the streets were just as small, but people seemed busier here, in more of a hurry. They passed by rows of restaurants, and boutiques, and antique shops. Rey turned them down a side road, and Finn observed the tree-lined yards and quirky homes. A few kids decked out in coats and hats were running around in someone’s front yard. He watched a little girl tackle a little boy, their colorful figures rolling around in the grass, before they turned into meaningless dots in the side mirror.  
  
The VA was on the outskirts of downtown, a red brick complex that stretched for a few blocks and was just down the road from New Haven’s K-3 elementary school. There were lots of cars in the parking lot they pulled into, but hardly a soul was outside. Rey pulled them into a spot, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine stilled, the music silenced. Finn moved to open the door, but a soft hand on his bare arm stopped him.

“Are you sure you want to come? It wasn’t fair of me to just ask you like that. I hope you don’t feel like I pressured you into this, or anything,” Rey said, wearing the most earnest expression he’d ever seen. "If I'm being honest, it was kind of just an excuse to hang out with you."  
  
“Rey, I wouldn’t be here, if I didn't want to be,” Finn replied, and was surprised to find he wasn’t lying.

_ An excuse to hang out with you _ . This was so strange. Not bad strange, or uncomfortable strange, just… strange. He supposed it had a lot to do with what she’d said earlier - loneliness. 

Rey studied him for a long moment, eyes roaming but she must have not found what she was looking for because she squeezed his arm, and let go. The afternoon was just warm enough to be comfortable, but autumn's chill was lurking in the breeze that brushed past him when he hopped out the passenger door. Finn really wished he'd bought a coat. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, arms tightening and prickling with cold, as he fell into step with Rey. Tomorrow he'd take another walk into town and check that off his list before the weather took a turn for the worst.  
  
"It's pretty laid back," Rey explained. They were approaching the front doors, and Finn looked up at the sight of red, white and blue. An American flag was twisting and writhing in the wind above them. “Most days, only a few people talk, and it doesn’t even have to be about what you expect it to be. Jessika - you’ll like her - ranted about a new show she found on Netflix for, like, twenty minutes the last time I came. Poe tries to keep everyone involved, but like I said, there’s no pressure to talk.”

They were inside now. There was some light traffic in the lobby. A few older men and a woman were standing in a group by the receptionist, chatting in low voices. One man was wearing a hat that identified him as a Korean War vet, and the others wore similar memorabilia. All Finn had was an old uniform, and the basic benefits the army gave you after you left.  He hadn’t even considered spending money on things that reminded him of Over There. Rey steered them away from the lobby, and to the left down a long hallway of doors and blind-covered windows.

“Poe?” Finn echoed.

“Shit, sorry. Getting ahead of myself,” Rey laughed, knocked her elbow against his. “Poe Dameron. He’s the friend I was telling you about who runs the whole thing. He leads the discussions, and all that. He was… Well, I’m sure you’ll get to hear his story. He’s usually the one who ends up talking the most. You’ll like him, too. There are some older folks who join, but it’s mostly a lot of young kids like us. Again, it’s really chill.”

_ Kids _ . Finn knew what she meant, but it was funny to hear that word in relation to himself. Funny because he didn’t have a lot of clear memories from that time in his life, and even fewer were memories that looked like the childhoods they depicted on TV. All smiles, and sleepovers, and lazy summer afternoons. His sisters were the bright points, but they were older, and worked so much he saw them only in flashes. Like an eclipse, their orbits would pass by for a brief moment, and then they’d be off to another graveyard shift, and Finn would be off to school or bed. It pained him to think he might not recognize them if he passed them on the street, and he could have. For all he knew, they’d moved West, too. They could have been in goddamn Timbuktu, and he wouldn’t know.

Rey was still talking, rattling off names he knew he wouldn’t remember and retelling some anecdote about that one time someone said this thing and they all laughed their asses off for the rest of the session. He did this sometimes, lets his thoughts wander too far past the border into bad territory. It happened in the shower, in bed, in the grocery line. Or when someone was talking, and he was supposed to be listening.

“This is it,” Rey announced, holding open one of the doors that looked like all the others they’d passed by.

Finn stepped past her. There was a circle of chairs in the middle of the carpeted floor, all of them except four occupied. Quiet conversations filled the room, a low buzz of words and laughter. The windows on the back wall faced another part of the campus, and a green space lined with tall oaks. Something uncoiled in his stomach, a release. Finn didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this was better. Chill, as Rey had said.

“That’s Poe, and Jess,” Rey said, pointing off to the side where a man was standing and talking with a young woman. She waved, and caught the young woman’s - Jess - attention.

“Hey!” Jess greeted. Her hair was tied in a messy braid that hung down her right shoulder, and she had on a sweatshirt that said AIR FORCE across the front in big, bold white letters. She gave Rey a hug, and her dark eyes found Finn’s. “New recruit?”

“Finn,” he replied. Her hand was rough against his, but her smile was sweet.

“Jessika, but call me Jess. Poe will be happy to see a new face. Hey, Poe!” Jessika called over her shoulder, and Poe Dameron, who Finn had been watching out of the corner of his eye stacking pamphlets on a table covered in refreshments, perked up at his name. Jess waved him over, and once he was a few steps away, continued talking. “Rey managed to drag along a new guy.”

“Awesome! Glad to have you here,” Poe said, grinning, as he came to a stop beside Jess.

Finn’s hand was sweaty. When did that happen? He wiped his palm - cool and casual - against his thigh, and shook the hand Poe offered him. Up close, it was kind of hard not to focus on the fact that Poe Dameron was a handsome guy.  Finn didn’t know what to do with this, except try to not make himself look like a weirdo. Poe was wearing a faded, brown leather jacket - nothing military - and his hair was dark, wavy, a few curls falling against his forehead. His smile was wide and beaming. No wonder everyone came. Finn already felt like he could spill every horrible thing he’d ever done, and Poe would just nod and accept it.

Finn realized he probably should be saying something right about now. So much for not looking like a weirdo.

“What’s your name, buddy?”

“Finn.”

“Finn,” Poe repeated, nodding to himself. His smile was still intact.

Rey and Jess had moved on to sit in the circle, leaving him stranded, but he was an adult. He could handle himself on his own. Finn could talk to an attractive guy in a place he’d avoided for two years. He didn’t need his hand held through every social situation. Not that Rey had been coddling him. He was the one who’d latched on like a toddler clinging onto his mother the first day of preschool.

“Well, like I said, we’re glad to have you here. I’m gonna get us started, but do you have any questions? Concerns? I hope Rey filled you in on the basics.”

Finn shook his head.

“Nope. No concerns, or anything. She told me it’s pretty chill.”

Poe laughed, a warm sound, and clapped him on the shoulder, a few inches to the right of his scar. Finn stiffened out of habit, and Poe noticed, dropped his hand with a look Finn didn’t know how to read. It wasn’t pity, or discomfort. Something close to understanding, but Finn wasn’t all that good at reading people. That fact was becoming more apparent with every passing second. Poe started speaking again before Finn could think too much more about it.

“Yeah, that’s one way to put it. My number one rule around here is you speak on your own terms. Nobody’s gonna force you to share, or participate. We’ve all got our story, and it’s your choice to share it, a little of it, or nothing at all.”

He didn’t realize they’d been moving until they were lingering on the edge of the circle. Rey caught his eye, and patted the empty seat beside her.

“We can talk after, if you want. Feedback is always appreciated,” Poe said.

He met Poe’s eyes that were level with his own, and wondered how people smiled all the time like this, and why they kept smiling at him.

“Sure. That would be great. Yeah,” Finn replied, mouth always one step ahead of the rest of him.

“Great,” Poe said, and started to make his way to a seat, but turned back. He leaned in, close enough that Finn could smell aftershave and real leather. “One more rule… Have some fun.”

“Oh, uh, okay. I can do that” Finn said, sounding fainter than he meant to, and Poe turned away for real this time with one last flash of white teeth.

Finn felt very far away from himself in a new way. He supposed this week was just a week of firsts. He settled into the chair Rey had saved for him, and tried not to make eye contact with anyone else in the circle. His gaze settled on Poe, who was the only one standing.

“So? What do you think so far?” Rey whispered, shoulder bumping against his.

“Good. It’s good,” Finn whispered back, and meant it.


	4. Chapter 4

Rey was right. The whole thing was more like a social gathering. People shared stories about their kids, and their jobs, and how they were dealing with the day to day. Jessika and a guy who introduced himself as Wexley got into a heated debate about a TV series Finn had never heard of. Poe ended up breaking it up by throwing in his own opinion, and Finn found that yeah, he was having fun. This was a good group of people, who were hurting in all sorts of different ways but they had come together for the sake of being together. Not all of it was lighthearted, which Finn expected.

"Sometimes,” a woman with short hair started, hands fidgeting in her lap. Finn hadn't caught her name. “Sometimes, I just wonder, you know, did I really make it out? It’s been almost three years, and it feels as real as yesterday. I'll hear my kids crying in the next room, or something mundane like that, and suddenly, I’m right back in the middle of it all, and that’s… It’s hard to find the way back.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Finn took a deep breath. Hearing someone else say those words out loud was heartbreaking, and terrifying, and a relief. He was relieved.

"I think,” Poe said, and Finn watched him, the way he made sure he was looking right into her eyes, his face an open book. “I think we leave a part of ourselves there. It is what it is. We can’t change that, but we’re still who we are. I remember getting home, and I felt the same way. It was like some sort of dream. Couldn't be real. A car alarm went off in the middle of the night, and I thought to myself, _This is it_ , but it wasn't. From then on I knew how hard it was going to be, but we’re here now."

Something rose up inside of Finn’s throat, a tidal wave. It crashed against the back of his teeth.

"I… “ Finn breathed out, voice rough. Rey’s head snapped up; he could feel her stare on his cheek. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “I came back from… Over There about two years ago.”

The waves crashed over the breakwall, over his bottom lip, and spilled into his upturned hands. Saying it out loud made it real. It had always been like that in his memory, since the moment that plane had landed on the tarmac. Capital like a holiday, but it wasn’t something to celebrate. It was just this constant event that never stopped creeping up on him, even though he knew it was there. No matter how many times he circled it, marked it, highlighted it in his mind. He stared at his hands, the marred places where callouses had once made their home. A gun, too.

"I, uh, I just… I wanted to say,” Finn continued. As quick as the dam had broken, it was being rebuilt double time. The words were starting to slip out of his grasp, the current cut off, but he needed to keep going. “The dreams. They're the worst part, and, you know, they don't always happen at night, but… When you wake up, or when you look outside, and the sun is just coming up, or it’s already up, and everything’s just sort of still and quiet? That’s what keeps me grounded. Reminds me where I am.”

The whole room was looking at him, and Finn felt like he might suffocate, but he’d said it. He’d said something. The woman - now that he thought about it, her name might be Pam - gave him a small smile, no teeth. He looked at the floor, studied the tiny flecks of color in the carpet and the tips of his boots. Nothing felt better inside. There was no earth shattering revelation, but he’d done it. One step. A hand on his forearm. Rey’s. She stroked a circle into his skin.

"Thank you, Finn,” Poe said after the silence had started to get too heavy. Finn nodded in acknowledgement, but kept his head down. “Anyone else?”

The conversation changed course from there, steered back into safer waters. Finn listened, absorbed as much as he could, tried to keep better track of who was who. Rey shared little stories about the rec and her kids, how it was the best job she could have asked for, couldn’t imagine herself anywhere else. Some of them he’d heard already, and there was a selfish sort of satisfaction in knowing something before other people did. Like he was special, or something. Knew her better, even though their friendship (Was that okay? Was it okay to call it that already?) hadn’t hit the twenty four hour mark. A few more people spoke, and then Poe was standing up.

"Alright, everyone. It was good to see you all again, and,” Poe said, meeting Finn’s eyes for a second, “to meet a few of you. I hope you got something out of today. Just a reminder that Monday is cancelled because of a dinner fundraiser, but we’ll be back to normal on Thursday.”

The circle disbanded. Some people moved to loiter by the far table, pouring coffee and snacking on store-bought muffins. The rest had moved like an amoeba to swallow up Poe. All Finn could see was the back of his head whenever someone shifted to the left, or a little to the right. He stayed seated. The hard plastic wasn’t doing anything for his spine (or the rest of his body for that matter) but Finn felt a little out of his depth. Too many faces, too many names, too much potential for questions if he approached anyone. Sitting and waiting and keeping to himself seemed like a good plan.

He turned to Rey, but she and Jess were absorbed in a separate discussion, bent towards one another so Finn couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He glanced at the clock that was hung above the door, and was shocked to find the hour hand pointing at two. While he was busy marvelling at the passage of time, Finn hadn’t noticed the seat to his left was occupied once more.

Poe had taken his jacket off. It was draped against the back of the chair he was leaning sideways against, whole body turned towards Finn, arms crossed, both knees a few inches from Finn’s thigh. Finn glanced at Poe’s hand curled around his bicep, the fabric of his black fabric of his sweater crinkling beneath his fingers, and remembered it on his back, nothing like shrapnel but still warm, still enough to remind his skin of that day. He hadn’t meant to react like that, like a caged animal, but touch was hit or miss with him. A towel after the shower was one thing, but he couldn’t even look at his back most of the time. Rey touched him, but her intent was always clear, and never above the forearm. Always reserved, but affectionate. He felt a little embarrassed. People were tactile, and Poe didn’t know a thing about Finn, hadn’t meant anything by it. He didn’t know why he felt the need to explain himself to _himself_ , but it felt like something important. Another step to take, but not right now. _It’s your choice to share it_ , a small voice reminded him. He didn’t have to explain himself. Not right now, but maybe later.

“Did you have fun?” Poe asked.

"Uh,” Finn said, eloquent as ever. “Yeah, I guess so.”

"You guess so?” Poe repeated around a laugh. “Rules are rules, man.”

"Wait, no, I didn’t mean that. I just… “

“It’s alright. Hey, really, it’s fine. I’m just messing with you,” Poe said, hands up in surrender. Finn watched his expression turn from playful to somber, grin shrinking into something thoughtful, and Poe continued in a low voice, “By the way, what you said back their to Patty… Thank you. It helps when it’s not only me, you know?”

Finn picked at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. He felt hollowed out in a way that wasn’t really good, but wasn’t really bad either, like his words had carved out a little hole inside of him. He thought about the glass half full/half empty argument. Was it a piece of him gone, or was it a space to fill? Finn wasn’t sure. That argument was a tired one anyway.

"It was nice to be around other people who get it,” Finn said to Poe’s knee. “Thought I’d said something wrong for a while there.”

“Believe me, what you said wasn’t wrong by any stretch. I don’t have all the answers, and I was happy you joined in. A fresh take is never a bad thing. Oh,” Poe said, shifting so he could take something out of his back pocket. It was one of the pamphlets Finn had seem him organizing before the meeting. “This is a schedule for the upcoming months. I think it goes all the way to December. If you want to come around some more, we meet every Monday, Thursday and Saturday. If not, well, you can toss that in the recycling bin on the way out."

Finn took the glossy paper from Poe’s hand, rubbed the pad of his thumb over the cover, and said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Poe opened his mouth to say something else, but Jess appeared out of nowhere, Rey in tow. Finn noticed their hands were interlaced, hanging between them, and oh. Oh. The hug, the quiet conversations, smiles that held a different weight across a room - it made sense.

“Hey, so we’re planning on grabbing lunch. Maz’s sound good to you guys?”

“If you want me to take you home,” Rey said, letting go of Jess’ hand to gesture, “it’s no problem. I’m not going to drag you along if you don’t want to come, we can go another - “

“No, it’s cool. I’m really hungry, actually,” Finn interjected before Rey could finish.

She did that thing again, the searching-his-face-for-something thing. He stared right back. Not as a challenge, but a reassurance. It was fine. He appreciated the concern. She seemed to really care, but Finn knew his own limits. He was a little worn out, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone out for fun with people he wanted to be around. This would be good. He wanted it to be.

“Poe?”

“Sure, I haven’t seen Maz in a while. I just need to take care of a few things around here first.”

“We’ll save you a spot,” Rey said, and turned to Jess, cheeks dimpling when she gave the woman another smile.

Finn got up, waved over his shoulder to Jess and Poe, and headed out with Rey by his side. The hallway was just as quiet as when they’d first walked through it, but despite the deja vu, it felt like a lifetime had passed since then. Their footsteps echoed, off beat and then, finally, together, like a march. Afternoon light spilled through the emergency exit door behind them and across the tile, stained the floor a faint gold. Their shadows's hands moved across each other with every step. Finn thought about Jess and Rey, the softness between them, and how he wasn't sure he knew how to be like that with anyone anymore. He thought about hands, and warmth, and the folded paper in his back pocket. He let the thoughts go. Some bridges weren't meant to be crossed just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this during lunch, so I hope there aren't too many errors. Enjoy!


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing that Finn noticed about Maz’s was the photographs. It was impossible not to. Framed and laminated pictures of famous celebrities, musicians, politicians, etc. (all of them signed); candids that dated back to what looked like the forties; pictures of New Haven from every decade; family portraits - they were everywhere, covered the walls from ceiling to floor like a three-dimensional wallpaper. The second thing he noticed was how packed the place was. Finn hated crowds, hated the smell of people’s perspiration and perfumes, unwanted skin on skin, everyone talking over each other at once. It made him feel like he was being buried alive, but there was a subdued air here, like everyone knew their place and were content minding their own business, staying out of the way. Waitresses bustled about, carrying trays that were overflowing with food and drinks, and Rey navigated them through the thin walkways like a professional, dodged plates and chairs and elbows with ease. Finn, on the other hand, managed to trip over two chairs, and almost spilled a glass of soda all over some poor toddler in a highchair. He let out a breath of relief when their journey ended at a booth nestled in the back corner, disconnected from the rest of the restaurant.  
  
Finn took the seat across from Rey, assuming that she probably wanted the space beside her for Jess. This gave him a clear view of the controlled chaos that was the kitchen line. An old woman, natural hair tied back with a bandana, stood in the eye of the hurricane, stacking plates, shouting out orders, calling for hands. The bright yellow of her layered shirt complimented the dark umber of her skin. She was short, but slight, barely above eye level with the counter, but there was no mistaking her as a person of authority. When she opened her mouth, someone came running, no matter what.   
  
“That’s Maz,” Rey said. She’d followed his line of sight, and waved when the woman - Maz - turned towards them, arms loaded with plates of burgers, fries, comfort foods Finn had forgotten existed. He watched Maz squint at them through a pair of old-fashioned bifocals that dominated her face, and then she was passing off the food to free hands, scurrying towards them faster than Finn expected a woman of her age to move.   
  
“Rey Walker!” Maz exclaimed, a big voice for such a tiny body, once she reached their table, and Rey got up to embrace her.   
  
“How are you doing, Maz?”   
  
“Oh, just fine, my dear. I’m eighty years old, what do I have to complain about?” Maz replied, the lines around her mouth deepening, forming canyons when she smiled. Her magnified eyes landed on Finn, dark and critical, and under her scrutiny, he was suddenly very young, like her gaze had shaved two decades off of his life, sent him back to the time of scraped knees and packed lunches. He heard, in that moment, a special brand of respect that told him it would be unwise to underestimate a woman like Maz. He fidgeted. Old leather crackled beneath his legs. She hummed as if to signal that she’d come to some final conclusion.   
  
“I have not seen your face here before.”   
  
“This is my first time in New Haven, ma’am.”   
  
“First time? You came to the right place then!”   
  
Finn held out his hand for her to shake (he couldn’t remember shaking so many hands in his life before this week), but she only placed both of her small hands atop his and shook with laughter instead.   
  
“No, no, no. Around here, we hug, young man. Come.”   
  
There was a lilt to her words that hinted at roots that hadn’t sprouted in America. He bent forward, and allowed her to wrap her arms around his waist. She smelled like good cooking, and home.   
  
“Now,” Maz said after she’d let him go. The golden bracelets around her wrists clinked like wind chimes when she placed her hands upon her hips. “I must know your name.”   
  
“Finn, ma’am.”   
  
“Hey, I’ll be right back. Jess just texted,” Rey announced, excusing herself.   
  
Finn watched over his shoulder as she maneuvered her way back towards the front door. A fish swimming against the current. When he turned back, Maz was watching him once more with her unnerving, near black eyes. Finn was tired of being looked at like this. As happy as he was with the company, a part of him longed for the days when people’s eyes skipped right over him like he didn’t exist, and hadn’t existed at all. He wanted to tell her if she looked close enough, she wouldn’t like what she found. He was worried she already had.   
  
“I came to this country when I was four years old,” Maz began, soft but steady. “These pictures you see - they are only parts of many lifetimes, but they tell a story. I have heard so many. You learn to know when people have a story. I can tell yours is not an easy one.”   
  
Finn did not know what to say to that. _You have no idea_ , or _There isn’t easy, and then there is impossible_ , or _I don’t know if you can ever tell a story like mine_. He returned her stare, and hoped that she could hear his thoughts, that telepathy was another skill learned in old age. Finn saw the decades written in her skin. The wrinkles and scars were lines of a book that Finn could spend the rest of his life reading, and never finish. Maz was looking at the wall now, the wall covered in stories, a distant sort of melancholy clouding her features.   
  
Familiar voices shattered him and Maz’s quiet contemplation. Rey reappeared with Jess hot on her heels, and they scooted themselves into the booth, laughing when Rey almost slipped into Jess’ lap. It was sweet to watch them, how comfortable they were around each other.   
  
“Oh, Maz, I didn’t see you!” Jess exclaimed once they’d settled in, reaching across Rey to grab the woman’s hand. "How’s the place been without us here keeping you busy?"   
  
“Much better without your troublemaking,” Maz said, but the quirk of her lips turned her words fond. “Speaking of, where is my boyfriend? I miss him terribly.”   
  
Jess only laughed, and pointed somewhere over Finn’s shoulder.   
  
"Sorry to keep you waiting. Had to take BB-8 home," Poe’s voice, a little out of breath, said behind Finn’s back.   
  
Finn watched as he stooped down to Maz’s level so he could kiss her cheek. Next to Poe, she looked like a child, but the comparison made Finn want to laugh. The idea infantilized her; nothing, it seemed, was capable of diminishing a presence, a personality, like hers. Certainly not her height. Maz tutted, reached up on her tip toes to brush the flyaway pieces of hair that had fallen into Poe’s face.   
  
“Need any help around here? If the stove ventilation’s still giving you trouble, I can take another look.”   
  
"He is too good to me,” Maz said, patting Poe’s arm. “Thank you, darling, but sit down and relax.”   
  
Maz disappeared into the kitchen, saying something to the staff about usuals. Finn scooted over, and Poe plopped down beside him with a long sigh, knee knocking against Finn’s for barely a second, but enough to be felt, just a brush of denim against denim. Due to the front of the building being all windows, the only other light came from strings of fairy lights nailed along the place where wall met ceiling. Finn was hyperaware of the man beside him, how far his elbow had strayed into Finn’s space on the table, the cadence of his voice when he responded to whatever Rey had just asked, or said. Finn wanted to look. He was allowed to do that. Just look. Looking didn't mean anything beyond appreciation. Finn gave in and glanced at Poe out of the corner of his eye, which was a mistake. Poe had been good-looking under the harsh glow of the VA’s fluorescent lights, but here, where the light had softened the edges of the world, the shadows in turn hugged the lines of his jaw, cheekbones, the slope of his brow. Finn looked away.   
  
Being not straight and being in the army were two things that did not mix. It hadn’t been much of a problem for Finn. He’d gone to do his duty, to his country and his family, and had left all thoughts of things that didn’t revolve around that duty at home. He’d shoved it all away when he was Over There, packed up the old thoughts, and the old feelings, and left them to collect dust. People didn’t need to know about his personal life, the people he’d been with, or hadn’t. They’d asked, of course. _You married? Got a girl waiting for you at home?_ A few had called him the sorts of names he’d learned to let roll of his back. They spit them in his face, and Finn had just wiped them away. Forget it. Just forget it because it hadn’t mattered. He was ashamed and unsure of a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them.   
  
He grabbed a menu from a stack that was tucked behind a napkin dispenser and a salt and pepper shaker duo. The items were simple but abundant - a perfect detour for his thoughts. There were so many that Finn’s head spun trying to compare them.   
  
Poe was leaned towards him, chin in hand, eyes scanning Finn’s menu. With only a few inches between them, Finn could see the length of his eyelashes, the few days old scruff that lingered on his jawline, around his full lips. Finn was suddenly self-conscious of himself. He hadn’t washed this shirt in maybe four days (it smelled fine, like four days worth of layered cheap deodorant, but still), and his jeans were ripped, worn through at the knees. At least, he’d taken a shower.

“Do you like eggs?”

“Yeah.”  
  
“You ever had some on a burger?”   
  
Finn shook his head. His burger experiences happened at drive-thrus and alley bars, and their idea of a burger did not mix with breakfast foods.   
  
“I mean, everything on here is good - no bias, just the truth - but, pal, you gotta try it. Do you trust me?”   
  
“Sure,” Finn said, swallowed even though his mouth was dry.   
  
A waitress with short, blonde hair came back with a round of water, took down their actual drink and food orders. Poe ordered for both of them.   
  
“So,” Poe said, turning back to Finn once the girl had left. “Do you live around here?”   
  
Finn wanted to make a quip about how that sounded like a classier version of _Do you come here often?_ , but held back.   
  
“We’re neighbors. Next-door neighbors, in fact,” Rey answered before Finn could.   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yeah, I moved in about two weeks ago,” Finn clarified, and took a sip of water.   
  
“Where from? If you don’t mind me asking,” Jess joined in.   
  
“South,” Finn said. He picked at a chunk of lacquered wood, avoided the eyes he knew were watching him.   
  
“I was wondering about the t-shirt,” Jess said, gesturing with her freshly unwrapped straw at his bare arms. “Hope you’ve got a jacket, because let me tell you, forty might not seem that cold, but it is.”   
  
He was relieved that none of them pressed for more, okay with vague. Finn didn’t want them to think he was going for mysterious, or anything stupid like that. It was just hard. Hard to talk about a place that had been just that - a place. He missed it because it was known, and held memories of a time when his family had been a family, not a puzzle with all the pieces missing. That was the root of it, Finn supposed: he missed it, and that hurt, and he didn’t want these people who he’d just met to see him like that, like a puzzle without all the important parts.   
  
“What brought you up north?” Poe asked, rolling a straw wrapper between his fingers.   
  
“After I came back, I… moved around for a while,” Finn said, struggling to find the right way to sum up two years of unattachment. “Worked all over, but I’d never been out here, and I wanted someplace different, unknown, so… here I am.”   
  
“Here you are,” Poe said.   
  
When Poe smiled, the skin around his brown eyes crinkled like tissue paper, and his cheeks stretched into symmetrical parentheses. Finn didn’t realize he was smiling back until he felt his bottom lip split open a fraction, just a bit of dried skin separating. He touched his thumb to it, and his fingertip came back red, so he sucked it into his mouth, tasted iron.   
  
“For Christ’s sake,” Jess murmured, quiet enough that Finn realized he probably wasn’t meant to hear it.   
  
Rey shushed her, and Poe turned away, flicked the balled-up wrapper in her direction. It bounced off of Jess’s chin, and she chucked a sugar packet in retaliation. Finn wasn’t sure why or what was happening.   
  
“Anyway, here you are” Poe said, ending the mock fight with a flick of water, and settled back into a lounge position - one arm on the table, one arm across the back of the booth, hand a few inches from the back of Finn’s neck. “Do you like it? Think you’ll stay?”   
  
“The rent’s decent, and I wake up to the ocean every day, man. That speaks for itself.”   
  
Poe hummed in agreement. He tapped his fingers on the wood frame of the booth, the rhythm loud in Finn’s ear, steady enough to not be random.   
  
“What do you do when you're not at the VA?" Finn asked, shifting the spotlight away from himself and asking a question he’d been itching to ask. Two birds, one stone.

“I’m a flight instructor,” Poe replied.

“You know, I always wondered what it would be like to fly. To actually be the one behind the wheel.”

It was true. Finn had considered the air force, but something had held him back, kept his feet on the ground, buried in the sand. That didn’t stop him from wondering, wondering if it was a blessing that he’d stayed, or a curse that he wasn’t looking down instead of up. Their food came. A momentary reprieve. He hated to think that that was what his life had been reduced to - waiting for the next distraction. Like he was running away from his own mind.

Finn focused on the food instead. He couldn’t think of a time when he’d had food this good. He voiced this around a mouthful of burger.

“Told you, and hey, maybe you should come around the airport sometime. You passed it on your way into town. It’s right by the highway. I could teach you a few tricks, if you wanted,” Poe said, popping a waffle fry into his mouth.

“I can’t believe you just said ‘tricks’,” Rey said, making air quotes. “Finn, listen, I saw this guy do things that shouldn’t even be possible, and this is coming from someone who grew up with a father who flew planes his entire life.”

“It’s in my blood,” Poe said, eyes on Finn again. “My mom was a pilot. She taught me everything I know. I knew the first time she set me down on her lap in a cockpit that was what I wanted to do, so I got my bachelor’s, became an air force pilot, and the rest is history.”

It amazed Finn how excited Poe sounded. Jobs to Finn were a way to pay the bills. Nothing to smile, or talk about at any length. He’d tried his luck with the army, and, well, that hadn’t panned out as he’d expected. Even though he’d made the decision to stop, even though it was hard to stop once he started, Finn had no idea what to do with himself now. It was like he’d jumped into the bottomless mud pit of pedestrian life, and hadn’t bothered to bring a rope to pull himself out. He was stuck, waiting to sink, while he watched everyone else tug themselves free.

“I’m not a pilot-in-training. Do they just let you bring random strangers onto planes?” Finn asked, only half-joking.

“I have friends in high places,” Poe said with a wink. “And you’re not a random stranger.”

Finn wanted to say that he was. The words were right there, knocking on the backs of his teeth, but he kept his mouth shut. Another thing that amazed him: the kindness of the people sitting at this table. Rey, who had opened her door for him when he hadn’t realized he was lonely and offered another path. Jess, who had taken what little he’d given and hadn’t asked for more. Poe, who sat here with a smile on his face and acted like they’d known each other their whole lives.

“Give me a time and place, and I’ll be there,” Finn said instead, tossing the other words off the doorstep of his tongue.

“How about tomorrow? I can pick you up.”

“Alright.”

There was something liberating about saying yes. For a while, it was the other way around. When he’d got back, the word _no_ had been wiped from his vocabulary, and letting himself say it had been like climbing on a bike after four years. Off-balance, shaky, but once he’d got the pedals going, he craved the freedom. To be able to sit here and say yes to a thing that he wanted, instead of tossing that word onto the floor to rot like the lie it had been, was a new experience. It cleared the taste of that other one-syllable drug from his pallet and replaced it with another: one that wasn’t so desperate, but just as thrilling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was getting kind of long, so I ended it here. Next one will continue where this leaves off. Also, it's very late where I am so pardon any major errors. Hope you enjoyed!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for description of a panic attack.

Sunday was only a little over an hour away, according to the clock on the stove. Finn felt like the seconds, minutes, hours were slipping through his fingers, soft as silk. The lights, the photographs, the steady beat of his heart and the old, crooning music that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at all, notes blending into one continuous melody - everything had had the quality of a dream. He unfolded the napkin in his hand, the one that Poe had reached across him to grab and write his number on. The numbers looked up at him, cramped but clear, deep lines in the flimsy paper.

Now, in his apartment, with the silence folding him into its arms, Finn felt awake in an unpleasant way, the kind of awake where your mind reached out for the last remnants of sleep, hoping to catch it before it floated away and failing. He dropped the napkin next to the phone, and went to turn away but noticed a sticky note on the table, neon yellow against brown.

_ Came by to say hello, but you weren’t in. Hope all is well! Call if you need anything. - Anne _

Mrs. Browning. The voicemail. He’d forgotten. How funny was that? A day ago he would have been sitting here, waiting for his landlady for company, drinking a six pack and staring out at the water, all alone. Rinse, and repeat for the rest of the week, the month, and the next. He’d heard people talk about life-defining moments. Finn supposed he should count today as one.

He walked over to the sliding door, and leaned against the chilled glass, let it sap the heat from his side. Outside, the ocean was choppy, white crests flashing in the moonlight and crashing over the rocky beach. If he listened, tuned out the low hum of the fridge, he could hear the water’s quick breath.

Belonging. Finn had managed to make friends, and they seemed to like him well enough, and he’d been able to add more bullets to the list of reasons to stay. He was hesitant to use that word - it scared him, if he was being honest - but nothing else quite encompassed the feeling in his chest that was spreading throughout his limbs, soothing the itch inside of him to keep going, keep looking, keep moving. Right now, Finn was tired. He couldn’t keep going, looking, or moving if he wanted to.

Finn looked up. A plane was making its slow journey across the dark plains of the sky. His thoughts rotated back to tomorrow, and Poe. Rey and Jess had been quick to sing the man’s praises, rambled on about supermaneuverability and  _ best pilot on the West Coast _ . Apparently, the airbase and New Haven’s airport shared facilities, which gave the flight training program access to some of the more advanced, or less/not at all publicly accessible aircraft, but Poe had been adamant that they’d be flying his mother’s old World War II biplane. The idea of being so high above the world outside of his dreams, especially in such an antiquated piece of machinery, thrilled and terrified him, but he didn’t want to back out.

Against his better judgement - perhaps not better, but it was all he had - Finn was intrigued by Poe. Charmed, even. He’d met a lot of people when he’d got back, men and women, and only a few of them had caught his eye, but either they ended up not being able to handle him, or he himself lost interest. The first year had been the worst year. It was like he hadn’t left Over There at all, woke up at all hours of the night choking on his own screams, heard bullets in the  _ drip, drip, drip _ of water from a leaky motel faucet. Seeking out comfort in the dark had been as easy as pushing it away. He let people get close, but never close enough. Sometimes, they did the same. That had been alright, because it had never been about a relationship in the first place, just a means to an end except he hadn’t really known what the end was. Finn still didn’t know what the end was. It came down to the fact that even though he was intrigued, charmed, whatever he wanted to call it, Finn was not okay. He was Atlas, except the weight of the world was the weight of his past, and he needed to learn how to shoulder it, center himself and bear it.

The couch was there to catch him when he backed away from the door into the semi-darkness. He buried himself under the thin sheet, pulled his legs to his chest. He breathed, and the ocean breathed. They traded inhales and exhales, until Finn didn’t have the strength to watch the shadows, and closed his eyes against the cold light of the moon.

_ The blood on his hands is still wet, sticky like syrup. No one grabs him this time to pull him away. He sits on the hard-packed dirt, and lets the red pool around him. It fills the cracks, the veins of the earth. The bombs have stopped; the shooting, too. All that’s left are hollowed-out buildings, windows like empty eyes that accuse him, doors like mouths that whisper to him:  _ why are you here? _. He is alone, but not entirely. Slip is still lying there, staring up into the red sky. He reaches out to close the man’s eyes because that’s respectful, that’s what people do, but when his fingers touch his eyelids, the skin melts beneath his touch. Shifts, and twists, and he can’t look away. He is frozen. The skin stops moving. His sister, Amara, is lying there now. He hasn’t seen her face in six years. She is dead, like Slip is dead. He knows this. Her hand reaches out and cups his cheek. More blood. He feels it seep into his pores, and her hand does not move away. He is frozen. He is crying. The skin bubbles, and the face is Nines’s now; then Zeroes’s ; his mother’s, and his older sister’s, Tara; and Rey’s; and Mrs. Browning’s; and the man from docks in Maine’s who offered him a job and a cigarette and said he’d sailed the world, but couldn’t escape himself. He is frozen. The blood on his cheek burns, hotter than the sun. A brand. The face wipes itself blank, a void, and then,  _ Here you are,  _ the mouth says in Poe’s voice, a soft replication. The hand falls away. He is staring at his own face now. He runs and - _

_ He is on a plane headed home, watching the sunrise through a pinhole. The coast is beautiful like this, from up above, where he can’t see the damage, which is to say the people. His fatigues are heavy. They have always been heavy, but they are growing heavier, weighing him down and the plane - the plane is dropping. The water is getting closer. He doesn’t try to get up. He doesn’t want to get up. He is falling, he is dying, he closes his eyes and - _

_ He is standing on the rocks, where the earth meets the water, and his breath is the ocean’s breath, except the ocean isn’t the ocean. It is sand. It is always sand. The dunes churn, rise and fall, spill across his bare feet.  _ I’ll tell you a secret,  _ a woman says, but she does not exist here, her voice is the wind whipping across the horizon. He knows her, and he doesn’t.  _ I’ll tell you a secret. No one’s story is easy. No one’s.  _ He opens his mouth, but sand falls out, a waterfall of sharp grains that cut his throat, his tongue, chip his teeth. He can’t tell it, can’t tell her. He can’t breathe. He has been here for so long. He is dying. He never left. He has sailed the world, but he can’t escape this place. He can’t escape himself. He closes his eyes _ ,  _ and - _

Finn couldn’t breathe. His heartbeat was a frantic drum in his throat, like fingers by his ear, too uniform to be random. Something wet on his chest. Blood - it had to be blood. He hadn’t woken up. He was still dreaming. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to get up, but he was numb from head to toe, save for his back.  _ Open your eyes, open you eyes _ , his mind screamed,  _ just open your eyes _ . He didn’t want to. He couldn’t breathe. He was still dreaming, and he didn’t want to see, but he had to. He still couldn't breathe. Finn opened his eyes. The word was a blurry mess, but his fingers tensed around the wet thing. Red. There should be red, but all was white. It was white. Not blood. Not blood, just sweat. The sheet -  _ he was on the couch, he was awake, it was just a sheet _ \- slid, a dead weight, off the side, and Finn closed his eyes again, sucked in as much air as he could. Inhale. He was awake. Exhale. He was alive. Inhale. He was awake. Exhale. He was alive. Finn repeated the phrases, over and over and over, until his blood stopped pounding on the walls of his veins, begging to be let out.

Minutes, or hours passed. He flexed his fingers. The more his pulse slowed, the more feeling came back. When Finn opened his eyes for the second time, the fan came into focus, the shadows of its still blades spreading like flower petals across the ceiling.  _ You had a nightmare,  _ he told himself, took another deep breath.  _ You’re in the living room, and you are okay _ .

Everything was in shades of grey, the shades of night, but fainter. He propped himself up on his elbows, arms shaky but they supported him. The stove clock told him in neon green that it was almost half past six. His body ached and wanted for sleep, but he couldn’t go through that again, so Finn pushed himself all the way up now that he was sure of his strength. His shirt was freezing against his skin, damp with sweat like the sheet, so he peeled it off. A shiver rocked through his whole body.

The coffeemaker the last tenant had left behind was touchy, but today, it decided to work. Small blessings. There were two filters left. Another bullet on the list. Finn leaned against the counter, and watched the dark drops fall like rain inside the pot. It looked like rain outside, too. The sky was a deep, rolling grey, and the waves were bigger than last night, angry as they smashed into one another, foam flying like spit. He wondered if he should call Poe and tell him it wasn’t a good time. He wondered if they would even be cleared to fly if he didn’t.

From where he stood, Finn could see the pamphlet Poe had given him on the fridge, opened to the calendar. The softness that yesterday had brought was fading, shriveling without a place to take root. He wanted there to be a cure-all, something that would chase away the memories and the nightmares, unlock the chains that bound him to the past, but the reality was a single day with good people didn’t erase a lifetime of troubles. That sounded self-pitying, but it was the truth. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice how much time had passed until the coffeepot let out one last sputtering gurgle, its signal that it was done. He had one mug - part of the gift basket Mrs. Browning had left him that he’d torn apart when he’d gotten home last night - which he filled all the way to the brim. It was from a local store, had Providence painted on the side in all caps with a beach scene beneath the letters - a little boy standing on the rocks like the ones below Finn’s deck. 

Before he could take a sip, the phone rang. Finn looked at it. Mrs. Browning never called this early in the morning.

It rang again. And then again. He set the mug down, and walked over, squinted at the numbers on the green and black screen. Another shiver ran down the steps of his vertebrae.

“Hello?” Finn said into the receiver.

“Is this Finn?” Poe’s voice, laced with static, asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. Poe?”

“Wasn’t a fake number after all,” Poe said, laughing a little bit to let Finn know it was a joke. “Hey, listen, the weather doesn’t look it’s going to cooperate with us. Radar says a storm’s coming, so I’m grounded. I can still show you around the hanger, but if you’re not interested, I get it.”

“No, man, I’m still interested,” Finn replied, maybe a little too eager. “I’ve got nowhere else to be today.”

“You allergic to dogs?”

Below the layer of static, Poe’s voice sounded sleep-rough. He’d probably just woken up - it was still early - and wasn’t that an interesting notion? That Finn had been the first thing on Poe’s mind. Wishful thinking, but that was all it was. No harm in it.

“No,” Finn said, more a question than a statement.

“Good. You want me to come over now, or later? I’ve got nothing to do either.”

“Now’s fine.”

“Alright, then. Now it is.”

For a moment, it was just the two of them breathing, the miles between them filled with white noise and soft exhales. Finn figured he should be a little uncomfortable, but it was kind of nice, just standing there and knowing he wasn’t alone in the pale light of the dawn.

“See you soon,” Poe said, cutting through the silence.

“Yeah,” Finn said, and listened for the click of the line going dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so this is officially the longest fic I've ever written and it's barely begun. Thank you for all of the very kind words. You're keeping me going! As always, hope you enjoyed.


	7. Chapter 7

Finn felt like he'd been thrown into the ocean and forced to swim back to shore. Just looking at the silver-toned clouds, trees writhing in the wind, made his skin prickle, hair stand on end. There were no boats out today. The birds, too, knew a storm was coming, their song absent from the newborn morning. He couldn’t stop roaming, checking he had his wallet, his keys. Round and round and round he went, passing by the door every few seconds. He didn't know why he was so antsy. It was like hanging out with Rey right? Him and Poe were acquaintances, had the potential to be friends. This wasn’t anything beyond that. This was another chance to get out and get used to a new town with someone he (kind of) knew.  _ Not a date _ , his mind added as he started another circuit around the living room.  _ Great, thanks, _ Finn thought back,  _ so helpful. _ He hadn’t even considered that. Dating was so far behind the line where the time before the war existed. Even if he did want to cross that bridge, it was too long, too unstable. There was no telling if he’d make it to the other side if he tried. Besides, a man like Poe was definitely taken. He was just being kind. A friend.   
  
Three quick knocks startled him out of his thoughts. Through the peephole, Finn saw the distorted image of Poe, head down, wearing the same leather jacket from yesterday. He pulled at the hem of his shirt one last time, and opened the door.   
  
“Hey,” Poe said with a quick smile.   
  
“Hey,” Finn said back, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.   
  
“You ready?”   
  
Finn nodded, double-checked the lock and that the lump in his pocket was the shape of his keys before stepping out into the hallway to join Poe. Their footsteps echoed off the walls in tandem as they descended the stairs, Finn a few paces behind. The morning air bit hard, sunk its teeth into his bare skin, made Finn curl in on himself. It chased away the remaining fatigue, at least. The parking lot outside the building was mostly full. As they made their way down a row, Finn spotted Rey’s truck in all its rusty glory. Poe was still a few steps ahead, allowing Finn another moment to look. The slope of his shoulders under the jacket, the fitted denim jeans, the stray curls tousled by the wind. Finn forced his gaze down to the concrete.   
  
They stopped in front of a Jeep Wrangler. Its black paint was glittering in the sunlight, dew drops from the morning catching the tiny bit of sunlight that had snuck past the clouds. It was an older model, but Poe had done a good job with upkeep, looked just as good as a brand new one off the line. Finn popped open the passenger door. Instead of faux-leather seats, a corgi with orange and white fur blinked up at him. It bared its teeth, and let out a growl that was much too menacing for such a cute, little animal. Finn backed away.   
  
“Uh... Poe?"   
  
“Don’t worry. BB-8’s all bark, and no bite. C’mon, buddy. Look at me,” Poe said to the dog as he climbed into the driver’s seat, leaned down so they were eye level. As if it understood perfect English, BB-8 cocked his head, and seemed to listen. “Finn’s a good guy. Give him a break.”   
  
The dog turned back to Finn. If dog’s could narrow their eyes, Finn imagined BB-8 doing so. For a tense minute, the two of them just stared at each other, until BB-8 hopped onto the arm rest, and then disappeared into the back. Finn waited a few more seconds before taking the dog’s seat.   
  
“So, what’s with the name?” Finn asked, once he was buckled in and Poe had started to maneuver them towards the main road that led out of the apartment complex.   
  
“What do you mean? Oh, BB-8?” Poe reached out to fiddle with the radio dials, and continued, “It was the model of one of these toy planes I used to have when I was a kid. My mom got it for me for Christmas the year before she… The year before she passed.”   
  
Finn looked out the window. His fingers traced the spot where his wallet sat tucked away in his jeans. Finn had three things in it: his debit card, his ID, and a picture. It was the only picture he had of his home, and his family. The corners were bent, and it was fading with age, but the image was clear, even clearer in his mind: his sisters, his mother, and himself all sitting at their cramped dinner table.   
  
“How old were you?” Finn asked the window.   
  
“Eight.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, because there was nothing else to say to that, really. That was what everyone said.  _ He reaches out to close the man’s eyes because that’s respectful, that’s what people do.  _ Finn pressed his forehead to the windowpane until the vibrations of the road broke through the blockades of skin and bone, scaring away the memory. Not here. Not now.   
  
“It’s alright. Nothing to apologize for,” Poe said, but his eyes betrayed him, said that it was definitely not alright. “It kind of made sense, naming BB-8 that. He helped remind me when I got back - and still does - that life could be like that again, you know? Like it was before. It’s also a great conversation starter.”   
  
Finn wanted to say that Poe wasn’t the kind of guy who needed conversation starters - he looked like the kind of guy other people made up conversation starters for - but stayed silent, watched the road signs zip past them, green and silver blurs, as they merged onto the highway. The storm was almost upon them, clouds a cavalry of black charging across the ocean and hills. Rain was falling in the distance, a hazy, grey column. 

“Looks like it’s going to be a big one,” Poe said.

Finn agreed. Summer had always been like this back home: torrential rains that had flooded his youth. As a kid, he’d raced the rain, cherished the sun between downpours. The memory that followed was a gentle one.

 _His mother, standing on the screened porch, yelling at him to come inside, come inside before the sky lets loose. Him, sprinting towards the edge of the lawn where concrete met uncut grass, chest heaving and slick with sweat, bellies of the clouds hanging low and heavy above his head. Almost there, almost there. His feet crossing the finish line that was the top step, throwing himself on the damp wood, laughing, laughing. Then, the moment before the shoe drops, a held breath, and then the heavens would empty, angel’s tears spilling across the thirsty earth._ I beat it, mama, _he says_. Crazy child, _Ma says from the door, face upside down from where he’s laying, hands on her hips but she’s smiling. A crack of thunder, loud as his trembling pulse, and a question -_

A question. The words poured into his ear, his brain desperately reaching for them. Finn blinked, and instead of the porch, he was sitting in a car. No, not a car. It was Poe’s car. Where green hills and trees had been, Finn was staring at another parking lot, this one almost deserted. Poe was talking to him.

“Finn? Hey, pal, you still with me?”

“Yeah,” Finn replied, but it was like another Finn was speaking, his own mouth foreign to him, forming words he didn’t know. He’d done it again, let himself wander outside the fence, outside the edges of the map. “Yeah, I am.”

“You okay?” Poe asked. Everyone was so concerned with how he was doing. Poe’s expression was neutral, open like the way he’d been at the VA, and Finn wondered what he would do if Finn said no.

“Sorry, yeah, must have zoned out. I’m fine.”

“I was just asking if it’s alright that I grab something from the office.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Finn said, managed a smile. "That’s fine with me."

Poe gave him a look, one Finn couldn’t read, before getting out. Finn followed suit.

The wind was worse here, blocked his ears and beat on his limbs, and the sky had transformed into a dark, angry mass, rearing to unleash itself. He tucked himself close to the car, and jogged around the other side to where Poe was. BB-8 was sitting at Poe’s feet, close enough that he was pressed up against Poe’s shin. There was no mistaking that he was Poe’s protector. The second Finn rounded the corner, his big, innocent-looking eyes were locked onto him, a silent warning to not come any closer. Poe was either oblivious to this, or used to it. Finn was leaning towards the latter.

He matched Poe’s stride as they started up the walkway leading towards a flat-roofed building. From the outside, it didn’t look like an airport. Finn was used to parking garages, and traffic, and mazes of terminals, a campus so big you only saw maybe an eighth of it at a time.

“Do you fly people in and out of here?” He asked, voicing his curiosity.

“No,” Poe replied, voice raised so he could be heard over the the wind. “This used to be a working airport about a decade or so ago, but we use it for training and storage these days.”

Finn felt a lone drop of water hit his scalp just as they reached the main entrance.

The inside of the building reminded Finn of those documentaries, the one’s about life after people. A small row of chairs was off to the left, where people would have sat and waited for their flights. Old logos for non-commercial airlines were on the far wall behind the desks where said people would have checked their bags and begged for another connecting flight home. When he breathed, he breathed in the stale air of neglect. Poe led them down a hallway that looked like a recent addition, away from the abandoned shell of what the airport used to be. The walls were painted a fresh, clinical white. BB-8’s nails clicked against the industrial flooring. They went through another set of doors, and into a room of empty cubicles.

“Day off?”

“Classes are during the week.”

Most of the desks they passed were covered in photographs, pen holders, sticky notes, memos, office trinkets. One too many had model airplanes, posters of deconstructed engines and variations of the same timeline of aviation. They were headed towards a wall of windows, blinds closed on the other side of the panes, and a door that was slightly ajar. Poe muttered something to BB-8 who was trotting along at his side, opened the door the rest of the way, and walked through it. Finn slipped in after him, and was stopped immediately in his tracks.

To say the office was a disaster was a complete understatement. The entire space was brimming with stacks of paper; file cabinets and stacks of boxes that stood as tall as the ceiling; more stacks and more boxes. He waded through the detritus after Poe. Every step Finn took, he was tripping over something. Without warning, Finn’s hip slammed into something hard - a desk, by the feel of it - and he almost tumbled over it headfirst, but a hand grabbed his elbow, steadied him. A mini mountain of paper tipped over, a tidal wave of white, and crashed into another. Poe’s hand lingered on Finn’s arm, and he felt the cold shy away from the contact for a moment. When he let go, it crept back.

“What the hell is going on out there?” A woman’s shout, words muffled, seemed to come from nowhere.

“It’s me!” Poe yelled back, vaulting over the buried desk that had definitely given Finn a bruise, and disappeared around a corner Finn hadn’t noticed.

He could hear their voices - Poe’s, and the unknown woman’s - from wherever Poe had gone, just a hint of low and discursive murmurs. BB-8 scrambled his way on top of a cardboard box, walked in a circle before curling up on top of the lid.

Out of the few shirts that Finn owned, only one of them had long sleeves, and it was the one he was wearing. It was worn thin on the cuffs, paint-stained, had a hole on the left side where he’d ripped it on a nail. He'd bought it at a Goodwill in Colorado when he'd managed to land a job building decks with a small-time company, slowly but surely marking his path across the map that would end here. Everything Finn owned had stories like that. He didn't have the luxury of excess, to have things that didn't mean anything beyond their purpose, to have a room like this filled to the brim with accumulated junk. The chaos of it all was overwhelming. Finn felt like the room was trying to absorb him, drag him under the waves of disarray to never be seen again.

The voices were getting louder, more clear, and then the woman’s voice had a body to match. She was older, hair styled neatly into two long, grey braids. Much like Maz, she was small in height, the top of her head only reaching a little bit above Poe’s shoulder, but Finn didn’t need to be told that she was the boss. The woman’s wrinkled, brown eyes found Finn, peered at him through wire-rimmed glasses. Her round cheeks gave a soft quality to her features, and although her gaze was sharp, seemed to pierce right through him, Finn didn’t sense any malice behind it.

“Are you Finn?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“ _ Ma’am _ . I like this guy already,” the woman said to Poe, who was off to the side, sifting through a folder of more paper. Her eyes snapped back to Finn, and she continued, “I’m Leia Organa, but Leia’s just fine .”

“Nice to meet you, Leia.”

“Likewise. Wish the weather was nicer so I could let Poe give you the grand tour, but my husband has quite the collection of antiques out there for you to admire.”

“He collects planes?” Finn asked, a little impressed and a little intimidated.

Coins, cars and books were one thing, but planes were something else entirely. Anyone could gather quarters, but wealth was required - and a lot of it - to acquire a plane, let alone a collection. Leia rolled her eyes, an otherwise exasperated gesture turned affectionate by the smile tugging at her red lips.

“Yes, and he’s  _ very _ proud of them. Be glad he’s not around to give you the full lecture. God knows he’s dying to.”

“She’s not kidding,” Poe added before giving Leia a one-armed hug. “We’ll get out of your hair now.”

“Don’t forget to look over those reports tonight,” Leia said, poking at the folder Poe had tucked under his armpit. “And make sure to turn the alarm on when you leave. Han had a conniption the last time.”

“I know, I know. I won’t forget.”

Poe leaned in close to listen to something Leia was telling him. There was an easy fondness between them, like a bond between mother and son, that captivated Finn. The only women figures in his life had been his mother when she was alive, and his sisters when they’d been around to be influences. Anyone outside of that had been neighbors who never visited, or people on television who talked about things Finn hadn’t thought much about as a kid. He wondered what it would be like to have that with someone who wasn’t blood.

“Well,” Leia said, retracing her steps towards the corner from which she’d came, “I have some business to take care of, but if you need anything, I’ll be here.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Poe replied, making his careful way back to where Finn was standing. BB-8 perked up at the movement, and hopped off his mock bed, like some invisible rope was strung up between him and Poe.

"Alright. It was good to me you, Finn," Leia said, waving over her shoulder and giving Finn a parting smile, and disappeared once more.

As soon as he crossed the threshold back into the cubicle room, Finn felt like he could breathe again. The walk back was quiet, but comfortable. Finn wanted to ask about Leia, but he was happy to have the company, feel the occasional brush of an elbow against his. When they reached the front doors, the one drop Finn had felt on his head had grown into an absolute downpour. The heavens weren’t holding anything back today.

After a moment of them standing and watching the storm, Poe said, “How about we postpone the tour for another day? I’ve got a frozen pizza at home, if you’re hungry.”

“It’s not even nine yet,” Finn replied, but he was already going to say yes

“So?”

Finn had to laugh at that.

Poe took off his jacket and lifted it above his head, gestured for Finn to get under it with him.

“Here.”

Finn had to press in close, hip to hip, replaced Poe’s hand that was holding his side of the jacket up with his own. His body started to thaw, the heat of Poe’s body seeping into his. They pushed open the doors together, and what had once been white noise became the sound of millions upon millions of raindrops meeting their death on the blacktop.

Finn’s boots and the bottoms of his jeans were waterlogged, but it didn’t really matter. The air was freezing, tried to nip at him again, but that didn’t matter either. Running like this reminded him of the three legged races they used to do at school during recess, of racing the clouds and falling down at his mother’s feet. BB-8 hopped through the deep puddles that dotted the parking lot like a benign minefield, chased after them as they sprinted for the car. When they finally reached it, Finn threw open the passenger door, and dove in.

A moment later, after he’d let BB-8 in the back, Poe clambered into the driver’s seat. Someone was laughing. It was Finn.

“Oh my god,” he said between deep breaths. “I haven’t done that in years.”

“Hey,” Poe said, eyebrows drawn together like he was concerned. “Hey, you’re shivering.”

Finn was. He’d been so caught up in the adrenaline of it all that he hadn’t noticed. The sudden loss of heat when Poe had left him had apparently been a shock on his system. Tremors ran up and down his arms, to the tips of his fingers and back. Poe shook out his jacket that had been lying on his lap in a soggy pile, and leaned over to drape it across Finn’s shoulders. The inside was still dry, warm from their body heat, and Finn slipped his arms through jacket sleeves, surprised that it fit without any resistance. He thought he could get used to this: warmth without pain. The hot desert, the hot sun, the hot blood, the hot barrel of his gun - he wished he could erase it all, and replace it with this moment.

“Aren’t you cold?” Finn asked.

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” Poe said, and reached out to crank the temperature dial all the way to the right, as hot as it would allow. The vents coughed out cool air until Poe turned the car on all the way, and backed them out of the parking space.

The windshield wipers could barely keep up. It was like they’d been submerged in the ocean, the rest of the world reduced to a smudged afterimage of colors and vague shapes like an Impressionist painting. He touched a finger to the glass, watched a halo of condensation form around it.

“Why are you doing this?” Finn asked without meaning to. He’d meant to make a joke, but the question was already out there. No takebacks.

“Would you believe it if I said I just wanted to get to know you?”

Finn sucked in a breath, so quiet that the rain washed away the sound. A clap of thunder roared from outside, vibrated inside of him. Poe’s eyes were on the road. The grey light of the day diluted their color, cast long shadows across his cheekbones. The drive continued in rain-soaked silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter should be longer, but I wanted to post one within the week, so I split it up into two parts.  
> Also, you guys thought this was a real date, didn't you? :P When I said slow burn, I meant it. Hope you enjoyed!


	8. Chapter 8

The only time Finn had seen the mountains up close was from the window of the bus that brought him to Providence. Sure, he saw them every day from the apartment, those distant, towering giants shrouded in clouds and sometimes fog, but to be at the base of them, driving through the labyrinth of hills and cliffs, was another kind of breathtaking. Poe’s house was tucked away in the foothills of the Coast Range, a short drive from the airport but it was like they’d entered a whole other world. Green everywhere, and not another soul in sight. There was a joke about this being the perfect place for a murder on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t want to ruin the quiet beauty as they drove up a winding, gravel path. Water rushed down the driveway like a waterfall, but the trees above kept the storm at bay, branches stretching out to catch the rain, turned it gentle instead of angry.

Finn was sweating. Poe’s jacket was heavy, did the trick when he was drenched and windburned, but now, he was sweating, wiping his palms on his thighs every few seconds. He knew why it bothered him, why the slickness made his stomach turn, why he expected to look down and see red, but he didn’t want to think about that right now, here in the car of a guy who he barely new, who Finn wanted to like him.

_ Would you believe it if I said I wanted to get to know you? _

He couldn’t, really. Finn wanted to know Poe, though. That was a certainty.

There was a curve in the road, the trees parted, and the rain started up again. A cabin stood in the middle of the clearing, wood stained dark with water. It had a wrap-around porch surrounded by a garden that looked like it would be a sight to see in the spring.

“Home, sweet home,” Poe said, pulling up as close as he could to the front steps.

This time they made a run for it separately. As he watched from the front door, Finn felt bad about having the jacket all to himself as he watched Poe let BB-8 out the back, white shirt soaked through in a matter of seconds, before the pair sprinted to join him. By the time they made it, Poe’s hair was plastered to his forehead, and BB-8 was dripping all over the door mat. Poe went to open the door, keys jingling in his hand, but he stopped, stepped back. He was looking at Finn. A single curl drooped between Poe’s eyebrows, dripped water onto the bridge of his nose.

“It suits you,” Poe murmured, and then cleared his throat, turned away, fumbled with his keys before shoving one into the lock. “The jacket, I mean.”

Finn glanced down at himself. Water droplets were clinging to the brown leather. Was that a compliment?

“Oh, uh… Thanks.”

Once inside, Finn steadied himself on the door, and toed off his boots, placed them beside a pair of running shoes.

The cabin was everything and nothing like Finn expected. The loft ceiling and open layout gave an illusion of more space than there really was. He could see the living room, kitchen, and dining room from the foyer. The walls were exposed wood, smooth stacked logs that added an earthy feel and scent about the place. BB-8 had vanished, but Finn saw Poe in the kitchen, digging around in the fridge. He shrugged off the jacket, and there was a distinct sense of loss when he did. The air rushed forward from every direction to steal the heat it had given him. He hung it up on an empty hook. Finn wandered into the kitchen, and leaned against the island, the granite cold under his elbow.

“I hope you’re cool with plain pepperoni,” Poe said as he shoved the uncooked pizza onto the oven rack.

“I’m not picky.”

The beep of the stove buttons filled the silence, but once Poe was done, they were left to stand there, and Finn was made painfully aware of how much he didn’t know about the man standing before him. He didn’t know what to talk about, or more importantly, what not to talk about. He didn’t want to talk about the VA because that opened up all kinds of doors in himself that he wanted to keep locked. He could ask about Leia, but in his experience, people usually hated talking about work/work-related things. Poe saved him the trouble by peeling off his wet socks, grimacing when a steady stream of water dribbled from them and onto the hardwood floor.

“I’m going to go change, if you don’t mind. Make yourself comfortable,” Poe said, and headed down a hallway off of the living room.

Finn didn’t know what to do with himself. His apartment was compact, small enough that he knew every crack and crevice, but here, there was too much space. A long leather couch divided the dining room from the living room, and a flat screen TV was mounted to the wall above a wood-burning fireplace. The dining room wasn’t much of a dining room, but Finn didn’t know what else to call it. A round table - an antique by the look of the wood and designs on the legs - sat in front of a sliding glass door that faced the backyard and led to the deck.

There were photographs hanging up on almost every wall. Nothing like Maz’s collection, but it was clear Poe either had a lot of family, friends, or both. A few he could see were from when Poe was in the air force. There was one of him, a girl who looked an awful lot like Jess, and a couple other guys in uniform wearing sunglasses and smiles. Had they served together? They hadn’t said anything yesterday, but Finn understood. It was easier to talk about some things than others, and it wasn’t like he’d asked. Their conversation had skirted around the edges of their shared pasts. It had been enough to just know that they’d all been Over There. A picture at eye level showed what Finn assumed was a young Poe, no older than seven, hugging a woman who had the same dark, curly hair and that same disarming smile of his, all white teeth and crinkled eyes. Their cheeks were smushed together as they laughed at the camera. They looked happy.

“That’s me, and my mom,” Poe’s voice said off to Finn’s right.

He’d towel-dried his hair from the look of it, curls even more unruly, and he was in pajamas. Everything about him was soft, put Finn at ease in a way he wasn’t used to. He looked back at the picture.

“You look just like her,” Finn said, allowing himself to voice that one observation. He kept the one about their smiles to himself.

Poe hummed, stared at the picture for another long moment, and then moved away, back towards the kitchen. Finn followed after him. There were two stools on the other side of the island, and he decided that was the least intrusive place to situate himself.

“Do you have any family around here?” Finn asked, leaning forward on his elbows. Poe mirrored him, shoulders hunching under the grey cotton of his t-shirt, across the countertop.

“No. I’m an only child, and my dad lives in California. Same house I grew up in. Don’t have any extended family, either. You?”

Finn shook his head, plucked at his left sleeve.

“I don’t know who my father was. Mom didn’t talk about him, and I don’t care to know,” Finn said. Water off his back. Not having a father had plagued him as a child, but he knew that if someone was capable of walking away from the ones they were supposed to love, then they weren’t worth his grief.  “She died when I was in high school.”

Memories kept his family alive, kept them breathing, but even then, they were were more suggestions than facts. Saying it out loud made it too real, but he’d said it, and he couldn’t stop now.

“I didn’t see her a lot. She worked all the time, and after she died, my sisters ended up doing the same thing to take care of us.”

“Do you still talk to them?” Poe asked, soft, like he knew he was walking on thin ice.

Finn could feel it cracking under all the words he’d already said, but like yesterday, the tap was on, and he couldn’t shut it off. The water was higher than the dam. All these keys to lock all these doors, and yet they were all unlocked, all the things he’d shoved deep down peeking out of their prisons, waiting to make their escape. Poe’s eyes were on him, warm and open like him.

“No,” Finn said, and he hadn’t faced this head on in reality in a long time, only skirted the edges like they were a black hole, and he was flirting with its horizon. “I haven’t seen them since before… Before I went away.”

He heard the fridge door open and close, and an open bottle of a brand of beer Finn had never heard of was placed in front of him. Whatever it was, it was definitely better than whatever cheap crap Finn bought at the general store.

“Five o’clock somewhere,” Poe said with a shrug, and Finn smiled, close-lipped but still a smile.

Poe rounded the island, and sat on the stool beside Finn, legs spread wide enough that it was like in the booth, their knees knocking enough to let him know of how little space was between them. He breathed through his nose, traced circles in the condensation beading on the glass in his hand. Silence again. Finn wished he knew how to do small talk. A strong gale wailed outside, pounded more rain against the sliding door.

“I don’t think I told you, but Jess and I were in the same squadron.”

“I saw a picture,” Finn replied, remembering the sunglasses and the desert sun shining down on them like a spotlight.

“Her and I hadn’t even talked about what we were doing after we’d get back, and then she calls me up one day and says she’s living outside of Eugene, and wanted to know where I’d ended up, if I’d be able to meet up sometime. And I’ll admit it, I almost cried. That’s one of the few things I can thank the military for: giving me a family. We went through a lot together,” Poe said, and the last part sounded like an afterthought, something not meant for Finn to hear. “Anyway, my point is family is what you make it to be, you know?”

Finn raised his bottle in Poe’s direction.

“I’ll drink to that.”

Poe clinked his bottle against Finn’s to complete the toast.

Twenty minutes later, they ended up on the couch, pizza on the coffee table, and some documentary about space travel on the TV. BB-8, it turned out, had been curled up on an armchair that was sitting in the corner of the living room since they’d gotten back. He was snoring away, white ears twitching every once in awhile. Whether it was because of the beer or the fact that Poe was probably one of the most easygoing people Finn had ever met, he couldn’t be sure, but the conversation flowed better with every passing minute. Poe had his feet kicked up on the edge of the table, and was chattering about how he’d wanted to be an astronaut as a kid because it fused his two favorite things: space, and flying aircraft. Finn admitted that he’d been interested in a lot of things, but had chosen service over college.

“Did you ever think about it?” Poe asked, reaching for another slice of pizza. “College, I mean?”

People sometimes gave him a hard time about that, not having a college education, and it pissed Finn off to say the least. He wasn’t stupid just because he didn’t have a degree collecting dust in his closet. He’d seen more and done more, good and bad and everything in-between, the past two years than most people saw and did in a lifetime.

“Not really,” Finn said. “I don’t know. I never felt like that was where I was supposed to be.”

There was a question sitting on his tongue, waiting for its chance. He decided to set it free.

“You live here alone?”

Poe heaved himself into a sitting position, set his beer down next to his empty plate. His eyes met Finn’s for a second, then skittered away.

“Yeah. Just me, and BB-8.”

“It’s a nice place,” Finn said, swallowing down something that tasted a lot like a selfish brand of relief. He knew Poe wasn’t married from the lack of a ring on his hand, but knowing for sure was different. Not that it meant anything.

“Thanks. I almost didn’t buy it, but you can’t beat the view, or the privacy. The ocean’s incredible, but you should see the sunrise when it hits the mountains and the trees. Nothing can compare to that,” Poe said around a faint smile, like he was seeing the sunrise right there.  “Mostly, I just wanted somewhere quiet.”

“I came out here for the same thing,” Finn admitted after they’d lapsed into silence. “I got tired of wandering.”

He was happy he had. Finn couldn’t imagine himself anywhere else now that he was here. The roots were beginning to spread, bind him to the earth. He circled back to that word. Happy. Was he happy? He helped Poe clear off the table, and the word stuck with him, a shadow in the corner of his eye. Finn felt the same way he had around Rey, like he could just be himself. Whoever that was, he was allowed to be it. He fell back onto the couch, and the word sat next to him.

“What about you?” Poe asked, after they’d settled back into their spots on the couch, except where there had once been a chasm between them, there was now a few inches of cushion. Finn liked his space, kept to himself for the most part, but he felt calm beside Poe.

“What about me?”

“You got anybody?”

Finn almost laughed. He thought he’d made it pretty clear how very much alone he was.

“Nah, man. It’s just me,” Finn replied. He peeled back one of the corners of the label that was falling off the bottle in his hands. “That hasn’t really been in the cards since I got back.”

There was the horizon again, that familiar gravity tugging him closer and closer to the line. The lie pulled him back. Poe repositioned himself, couch shifting like waves beneath Finn’s thighs. He’d tucked one leg under him, elbow propped against the back of the couch, head in hand. Christ, why did he have to look at Finn like that? Dead on, like he was interested in every word that came out of Finn’s mouth.

“My parents were the happiest people I’ve ever known. I’ve always wanted what they had since I was a kid,” Poe mused, a sad tone to his words. “Haven’t found it yet, though.”

“I’m sure you will,” Finn replied, and without thinking, added, “Can’t believe you haven’t already.”

A strange look crossed Poe’s face, and Finn realized he must have said something wrong. He was just being honest. Poe was a great guy, had a great job and a great house, a great personality. A great smile. And he was genuine, made Finn feel like he mattered in Poe’s life even after they’d just met. Who wouldn’t want to be with a guy like that?

“Yeah, well,” Poe said, rubbing at his chin and the five o’clock shadow along his jaw. The strange look had passed, replaced by his quick smile, a flash of white teeth. “You never know who you’ll meet.”

Wasn’t that the damn truth?

Finn looked away to the TV, and watched as the show cut to a scene of vast open space. Just the stars, and nothing else. He had returned to that state of existence where time felt like a river’s current, minutes and seconds flowing past him. The rain pattered against the windows, less urgent but unyielding. His pants had dried, and everything was warm and relaxed, all the tension drained from his muscles and mind, and he thought again that he could get used to this. Finn let himself feel what he was feeling, and didn't question himself this time when he called it happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I love writing about them. Hope you enjoyed!


	9. Life Update

Hey, guys. Sorry it's been so long since I updated this fic. I miss it, and have NOT given up on it! Life has been very hectic, and I have been dealing with graduation plus a lot of personal things at home so I have not had the time, energy, and inspiration to continue at the moment. I'll try my best to get a chapter up after my break begins. Thank you for your patience. :)

**Author's Note:**

> In light of this weekend's events, my love for this ship has escalated beyond dangerous levels. Can't promise when the next chapter will be up since my spring break ends in two days. Please bear with me! Hope you enjoyed.


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